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Horse Stable / Execution Facility

A repurposed horse stable was the site of the largest mass murder in Buchenwald. Here, the SS installed a contraption used to murder over 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war between 1941 and 1944 by a shot to the neck.

Exterior view of the horse stable, which housed the neck-shooting facility. It is an elongated two-story building.
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Horse stable, April 1945. Photo: Alfred Stüber.

©Private collection
A galvanized trolley for transporting corpses, the front of which is folded out. The trolley is reminiscent of a large mining lorry: it is a large, angular tub, the front of which can be folded open. it stands on small wheels.
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Body container with which the people murdered in the stables were transported to the crematorium, 1950. Photo: Unknown photographer.

©Buchenwald Memorial
In the foreground, an info sign indicating that this is the site of the former horse stable. Further back the highlighted foundation walls of the stable, in the center of which is a memorial stone.
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A memorial was set up in the 1950s on the site of the stables that were demolished in the late 1940s, 2022. Photo: Lukas Severin Damm.

©Buchenwald Memorial

The shootings were carried out as a result of the so-called Wehrmacht Commissar Order, whereby state and party functionaries, political commissars, and Jews were not to be treated as prisoners of war but were to be shot at the front, in breach of international law. The Gestapo continued to weed out such individuals in the prisoner of war camps. Suspects were brought to the nearest concentration camp to be killed.

To ensure that this process went smoothly, the SS used the former stables of their riding hall to install an execution facility of their own design. While pretending to perform a medical examination, members of the SS would kill the captive from behind with a shot to the back of the neck. The corpse was then transported in a galvanized container to the crematorium for incineration. These containers—together with a reconstruction of the shooting facility—can be viewed today.

After halting these murders, the SS dismantled the facility. The building was probably demolished during the period when the area was used as a Soviet special camp.

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